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WASHINGTON — Back home, supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement clamoring for the debt-ridden federal government to slash spending say nothing should be off limits. Tea Party-backed lawmakers echo that argument, and they are not exempting the military's multibillion-dollar budget in a time of war.

That demand is creating hard choices for the newest members of Congress, especially Republicans who owe their elections and solid House majority to the influential grass-roots movement. Cutting defense and canceling weapons could mean deep spending reductions and high marks from tea partiers as the U.S. wrestles with a $1.3 trillion deficit. Yet it also could jeopardize thousands of jobs when unemployment is running high.

Proponents of the cuts could also face criticism that they're trying to weaken national security in a post-Sept. 11 world.

House Republican leaders specifically exempted defense, homeland security and veterans' programs from spending cuts in their party's "Pledge to America" campaign manifesto last fall. But the House's new majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, has said defense programs could join others on the cutting board.

The defense budget is about $700 billion annually. Few in Congress have been willing to make cuts as U.S. troops fight in Afghanistan and wind up the operation in Iraq.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in a recent pre-emptive move, proposed $78 billion in spending cuts and an additional $100 billion in cost-saving moves. While that amounts to $13 billion less than the Pentagon wanted to spend in the coming year, it still stands as 3 percent growth after inflation is taken into account.

That's why Tea Party groups say if the government is going to cut spending, the military's budget needs to be part of the mix.

"The widely held sentiment among Tea Party Patriot members is that every item in the budget, including military spending and foreign aid, must be on the table," said Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. "It is time to get serious about preserving the country for our posterity. The mentality that certain programs are 'off the table' must be taken off the table."

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, leaders of the group FreedomWorks, which has backed the Tea Partiers, recently wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial that "defense spending should not be exempt from scrutiny." On Gates' proposed savings of $145 billion over five years, they said, "That's a start."

Just about all Republicans — and plenty of Democrats, too — favor paring back spending. But when it comes to specific cuts — eliminating money for schools, parks, hospitals, highways and everything else — the decisions get difficult. Every government expenditure has its advocates and no one wants his or her program cut.

Fault lines have emerged within the Republican ranks over how deep to cut and where to whittle. In the coming weeks, lawmakers will feel the pressure from constituents and colleagues.

"Everything is ultimately on the table," said Rep. Jon Runyan of New Jersey, a freshman Republican and a Tea Party favorite.

That view could produce a rough tenure for the 6-foot-7 (2-meter) former pro football player, who just earned a coveted spot on the House Armed Services Committee, a fierce protector of military interests. The congressman's district is home to Fort Dix, which merged with neighboring McGuire Air Force Base and Lakehurst Naval Air Engineering Station to make the military's first three-branch base.

Runyan expects a committee fight over Gates' proposal to cancel a $14 billion program to develop the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle for the Marines and use that money to buy additional ships, F-18 jets and new electronic jammers. Already, several members of the panel, including the chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon of California, have signaled they will challenge Gates' move.

Runyan says he will decide after he's heard arguments from both sides.

No matter how much defense spending is trimmed, none of the cuts is likely to reduce the money that's available to the military to spend on the war fronts.

"We want to make sure men and women put in harm's way have the resources they need," said Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who recently traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan with several of his Republican colleagues, including a number of other freshmen. "That doesn't mean the entire defense budget has to be taken off the table," he added.

Several Republican lawmakers already have taken the first steps toward cutting defense.

Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas has proposed cutting total government spending by $153 billion, including deep reductions in defense and elimination of several weapons programs. Brady called it a "down payment" on getting the country's finances in order.

In an unusual political pairing, liberal Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a libertarian and former Republican presidential candidate, have joined forces in pushing for substantial reductions in the defense budget, including closing some of the 600-plus military bases overseas.

"I'll work with anybody," Frank said of the effort, which could attract other liberal Democrats who have tried for years to reduce post-Cold War military spending and tea party-backed Republicans.

The schism within the Republican ranks is philosophical as well as generational. Paul's son, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, 48, a Tea Party favorite, says all spending should come under scrutiny, from food stamps for the poor to foreign aid to money for wars. Sen. John McCain, 74, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, worries about the rise of protectionism and isolationism in the Republican Party.

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For all the talk, one Tea Party group is willing to give lawmakers some leeway, provided that they adhere to the movement's values.

Sal Russo, chief strategist of the Tea Party Express, said the defense budget should be part of the calculation and his organization expects lawmakers to "responsibly bring spending down." He added that his group will give them "flexibility to do their job."

Tea Party-backed Rep. Tim Scott of South Carolina said lawmakers "at the end of the day, will take a look at all the fat in the budget." But he said it was premature with two wars to say how Congress will make the cuts. Scott has two brothers in the military — one in the Air Force, the other in the Army.

The Tea Party, which sprung up shortly after President Barack Obama took office, is a loose-knit coalition of community groups largely made up of people with conservative and libertarian views who say government has grown too large, threatening individual liberties. The tea partiers support cutting government spending and reducing taxes.

The movement's name is taken from the Boston Tea Party, a 1773 protest in which activists in the then-British colonies in America boarded ships and threw their cargo of English tea into Boston Harbor in a symbolic act of protest against taxes.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Video: Cantor: ‘Everything’ is on the table for spending cuts

Closed captioning of: Cantor: ‘Everything’ is on the table for spending cuts

>>it's passing $14 trillion and last week you gave an interview to "the
washington post
" about this important vote that will come up in the spring about raising the debt ceiling which has been done for a long time in the past. this is what you said in "the
washington post
." it's a leverage moment for republicans, cantor said, in an interview. the president needs us. there are things we were elected to do. let's accomplish those if the president needs us to clean up the old mess. i want you to be specific. what's the leverage moment? what will you exact as a promise for your members to vote to increase the debt ceiling?

>>let me be clear. republicans are not going to vote for this increase in debt limit unless there are serious spending cuts and reforms.

>>like what?

>>that is just the way it is. so we have talked a lot about bringing spending levels down to '08 levels. we've talked about things that we can do to make sure that off into the future this kind of spending doesn't continue. when i went back and told you three bites at the apple, the other pieces are budget. we're going to work on our budget and say, look, we'll have to institute some reforms to make sure these spending patterns don't recur.

>>if you say serious spending cuts, you don't have something specific in mind. you'll know it when you see it, is that the approach?

>>that's not true. we'll have a vote on the floor of tuesday of this week directing our
appropriations committee
directing where those cuts are. there are hundreds of programs that will need to be cut. when you talk about cutting $100 billion, you're going to have hundreds of programs in the thousands pages of spending plan that the
federal government
has. this week we will vote on an issue having to do with the presidential election fund. we'll vote to cut that. that's a 500 and some
million dollar
expenditure. he'll see hundreds of programs experience analysis and cuts like that.

>>$500 million is a drop in the bucket. it's real money but in the
federal budget
that's nothing. you're not really tackling the big three. you're not tackliining entitlements.

>>i can tell you that we always said this. every dollar should be on the table. i have said before --

>>including defense?

>>absolutely. no one can defend the expenditure of every dollar and cent at the pentagon. we have to make sure that they are doing more with less as well.

>>look at "the
wall street
journa journal". let's scrap
department of commerce
and
housing and urban development
just for starters. would those be on the table?

>>everything is on the table.

>>cancer research
is on the table?

>>we have to do what families in this country are doing and what businesses are doing. you've got to learn to do more with less. you can't afford to sustain this level of borrowing and spending. everyone knows that. we have to be very, very good and disciplined to make sure that we are cutting what needs to be cut and focus on growing this economy so america can maintain its competitiveness and see jobs grow in the private sector.

>>majority leader reid
was on the program. i asked him if
social security
was in crisis. this is what he said.

>>when we start talking about the debt, first thing people do is run to
social security
.
social security
is a program that works and fully funded for the next 40 years. stop picking on
social security
. there are a lot of places --

>>do you think the arithmetic on
social security
works?

>>no doubt it does. it's not in crisis. this is something that is perp wet waited by people who don't like government.

>>are you prepared to raise the
retirement age
or seriously tackle
social security
?

>>what we have said is we have a serious fiscal train wreck coming for this country if we don't deal with these entitlements. this is something we need to begin to work on. for me the first entitlement we need to deal with is the
health care
bill.

>>we'll get to
health care
. i asked you about
social security
.

>>absolutely. we have got to focus on what we can do together. as that just indicated, the senate is not willing to do anything under
harry reid
.

>>what are you willing to do? means test benefits? raise the
retirement age
?

>>we have a program that we have seen one of our members,
paul ryan
, chairman of the
budget committee
, put together called the
road map
. he and
kevin mccarthy
and i wrote a book together and we reserved a chapter for discussion about
social security
, about medicare and how we can begin to --

>>i'm asking you what you are for?

>>what we're for is an active discussion to see what we can come together and do.

>>social security
has been discussed for years. the irony of
paul ryan
doing the response to the
state of the union
, he has proposed cuts to
social security
and medicare and republicans don't stand behind it.

>>that's not true. we put a chapter in our book about it because the direction in which the
road map
goes is something we need to embrace.

>>raise
retirement age
, means testing benefits, those are specifics.

>>the starting point in any plan has got to be we need to distinguish between those at or nearing retirement. anyone 55 and older in this country has got to know that their
social security
benefits will not be addressed. will not be changed. it's for all of the younger people. those 54 and younger, we're going to have to have a serious discussion. with
harry reid
talking about the fact that he doesn't want to even discuss it, that's not leadership.